


lead with your chin

by MontanaHarper



Category: White Collar
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, OT3, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontanaHarper/pseuds/MontanaHarper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are complicated and no one is perfect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lead with your chin

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 4x09 – Gloves Off.
> 
> There are hints of Neal's unrequited feelings for Peter and Elizabeth in this, and in my head I see it as pre-OT3, but it can easily be read as strictly gen, I think.

The quiet knock, when it comes, isn't really a surprise. Neal's been halfway expecting it since he got home, chest tight with anger and betrayal, right temple throbbing from Peter's knockout punch. When he opens the door to find Elizabeth, though, that is a surprise.

"Peter send you?" he asks, leaving the door ajar and walking away, back to the table and the bottle of Château Pontet-Canet he's been working his way through.

The door closes with a quiet click, and the _tap-tap_ of Elizabeth's heels follows him across the room. "No, but he did tell me what happened today. I came to apologize."

He shrugs, doesn't turn around. "I don't see how Peter not trusting me is your fault."

"I told him Sam was here," she says, moving into his field of vision. Her mouth is tight and she's twisting her wedding ring—her tell when she's nervous or upset. She makes eye contact, though, her gaze steady. "I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter," he tells her, and he means it. It would have happened anyway, probably sooner rather than later, because the bottom line is that Peter doesn't trust him. He's not trustworthy and Peter doesn't trust him and Ellen's dead and Sam's gone and it's Peter's fault and it's Neal's fault and it's not at all Elizabeth's fault. He repeats that part aloud: "It's not your fault."

She just looks at him for a moment, and then steps over to the refrigerator. He shifts his gaze to the glass in his hand, to the play of light on liquid, and listens to the rattle of ice on plastic. It's quieter than the last time there was rummaging in his freezer; there's no one hiding now, no need to drown out incriminating conversation.

"Here." Elizabeth presses ice cubes wrapped in a dish towel against his cheekbone and he sucks air through his teeth, a pained hiss that escapes despite the gentleness of her touch. She takes the wine glass from him and sets it on the table, guiding his hand to the makeshift ice pack. He obediently holds it to his face.

It's possible he's had more to drink than he thought, or maybe it's the lack of food that's making everything a little dull, a little fuzzy. The thin blade in his chest, sharp and bright and driven between his ribs by Sam's phone call, has turned into to a bruised ache that's both bone-deep and inevitable. Elizabeth rests her fingertips on his shoulders and steers him back a step, and then his legs fold and he's sitting in a chair.

"He wants to trust you," she says, pulling another chair over and sitting so that their knees touch, the soft gray wool of his trousers pressed against the hint of bare, tanned skin where the hem of her skirt has inched up. "But the two of you have so much history, so much baggage." 

She's so earnest it hurts.

"Are you suggesting that your husband and I need relationship counseling?" He means it as a joke, a deflection—misdirection without any sleight of hand—but she doesn't laugh. Instead she smiles at him, nothing but fondness in the curve of her pink-lipsticked mouth.

"If I thought I could get you both to go," she says, "I'd be on the phone making an appointment right now." 

Neal shakes his head. It wouldn't be enough, because Neal is Neal and he'll always be a little untrustworthy, and Peter is Peter and _he'll_ always need to be in control. The two of them together are like precision Swiss clockwork when they mesh, but more often they're oil and water, neither of which are good for your Girard-Perregaux.

They don't say anything for a moment, and then Elizabeth leans forward a little. "I'm going to ask you a question, and I want an honest answer. Not the answer you think I want to hear, not the con-man answer, but the one you really believe. Okay?"

He shifts the ice pack a little and nods, not really promising anything until he's heard the question. There are things he's willing to tell Elizabeth—and, by extension, Peter—and things he's not, secrets he wants to keep and ones he _needs_ to keep, and there are words that, if he spoke them, would leave him flayed to the bone.

"Do you believe that Peter loves me?"

His mouth is open before he even really thinks about it, reassurances already on the tip of his tongue, but Elizabeth reaches out and presses two fingers against his lips. "Your _honest_ answer, Neal," she reminds him.

He hesitates, then, more to give the impression that he's considering than because he actually is. His initial reaction may have been knee-jerk, but that doesn't make it any less true: he's never known two people more in love than Peter and Elizabeth. They fit together with an ease and simplicity that warms and comforts him, yet still makes something bitter twist in his gut.

This time when he goes to speak, Elizabeth doesn't stop him. "Yes," he tells her. "I believe Peter loves you more than anything else in the world." It's not one of the truths that hurts, not one of the secrets that needs to be kept, but it skirts the edge of something sharp and unvoiced, something Neal chooses not to examine too closely. 

Her smile is brief, but it's bright and genuine as well. "I know the two of you have had your differences, and I know he's made bad decisions where you're concerned, jumped to some pretty big conclusions—some of which were justified and some of which were not. I also know that if I had broken his trust and lied to him even half as many times as you have, he would have given up on me.

"He hasn't given up on you, Neal. I know maybe it doesn't feel like it right now, but he hasn't." She stands, then leans over and presses a quick and unexpected kiss to his forehead. "Think about that, okay?"

He's still sitting there, eyes closed against the spark of hope she's given him, long after the echoes of her footsteps have faded from the room.

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot possibly thank [**casspeach**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/casspeach) enough. She betas, cheerleads, holds my hand, and just is basically my lifeline when I'm writing.


End file.
